Showing posts with label Mass Effect 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mass Effect 2. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Built for adults:Mass Effect 3 (360) SPOILERS
As Sheppard flung herself into a shimmering column of light, and smiled as she fell, I glanced over at my wife. This has been a shared journey, where I would only play when she had time and willingness to watch. She had been captivated by the characters and the story.
She was weeping softly. She told me later, surprised at herself, that she couldn't believe that a video game had affected her so.
Mass Effect 3 is a masterpiece. It is a capstone on unique experience of unrelenting ambition.
If the extent of your enjoyment is tied to the cutscene at the end you have missed the entirety of the 30-40 hours that brought you to that point. Play it again, and reflect on the history across three games that brought Sheppard to this point. Revel in relationships gained and lost and if you are lucky, shed a tear.
Mass Effect 3 stands with Journey as diametric proof of games as art.
Rejoice.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
It's not the years it's the mileage: Dragon Age Origins (PC)
DA:Origins is an awesome sandwich where the bread is the awesome and a zeppelin of hot air is the meat. Of the 80 hours played the first 10 and the last 10 were the best parts, with tedious and endless side quests filling out the middle 60.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
The Sweetest Embrace: Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC
When my blue-skinned lover first hinted she might still be interested
I laughed with pure joy and joked about my alien lesbian tryst in Mass
Effect. My wife was immediately non-plussed at my juvenile joke, but
quickly explained that it was more than that. That she had been there
up until the end, and we had fallen into bed on the eve of a suicide
mission.
I laughed with pure joy and joked about my alien lesbian tryst in Mass
Effect. My wife was immediately non-plussed at my juvenile joke, but
quickly explained that it was more than that. That she had been there
up until the end, and we had fallen into bed on the eve of a suicide
mission.
Liara was my Sheppard's first true love, and her brusque rebukes in
Mass Effect 2 stung. It opened opportunity for romances with other
characters and my Sheppard pursued Jacob with vigor, but no real
connection.
The ME 2 DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker changes all that. On its
surface, it is an action-packed, suspenseful thrill ride, reuniting
old flames in a common purpose. At its core, it uses the plot as a
base to repair or destroy the original relationship with Liara.
Ethical dilemmas abound, as do the opportunities to say the wrong
thing at the wrong time throughout the myriad dialogue choices and
snap decisions created by the engine.
My wife watched as Sheppard and Liara rekindled their romance and she
finally understood, she understood why I took joy in these moments.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Blink Of An Eye:Six Months of Gaming
Usually the first few months into a new year are a wasteland for entertainment. Long known as a dumping ground for film properties unable to compete for summer dollars or good enough to compete for awards, this hard march to spring also affected game releases.
Until now.
2010 has proven itself to be the beneficiary of crowding in the 2009 holiday season, a trend that appears to be continuing into 2011. Spectacular games seem to be flowing unfettered on a near weekly basis with no sign of slowing down.
Since January my life has been dominated by the following experiences:
Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a Twinkie, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the game play time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.
Dante's Inferno is an attractive God Of War clone, literally stealing mechanics and game play from the trilogy Kratos made. Backed by a solid story re-interpreted from the epic poem, this brutally violent, twisted but visually impressive game is quick 10-15 hours. A locked camera contributes to unnecessary death and replay during platforming, creating pockets of annoyance in otherwise entertaining combat game.
Bioshock 2 suffers from a slow burn, tossing the player face first into repetitive combat without slight nods to story for the first few hours. Once all the major players are introduced, the plot and game play ramp up on a steep climb, culminating in one of the best endings I have ever seen. While not as lofty or cerebral in its goals as its predecessor, Bioshock 2 is a more than worthy sequel.
Heavy Rain is a perplexing game. A successful failure, the notion that it moves the medium forward in terms of storytelling, emotional engagement, drama or narrative is laughable. Brutally painful dialogue, voice acting and clichéd plotting are capped by a "twist" that exists for its own sake. As if by accident, Heavy Rain excels in the moments it allows itself to be a game, and the intuitive leap forward of extending quick-time events into the entire control scheme creates true moments of emotional connection. One can only hope that spurred by the innovative and sometimes gentle aspect of the controls, a stronger developer will take Heavy Rain as a starting point for a truly revolutionary game experience.
God of War 3 is everything one would want from the conclusion of the GOW trilogy. Tight game play combined with truly epic and stunning visuals tie a nearly incoherent plot together. Failing itself in its final moments, God Of War 3 betrays the very heart of the title character, stealing from Kratos everything that made him compelling.
Splinter Cell Conviction is an insanely short but beautifully crafted game. Not as short as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Conviction single player was finished in under 8 hours. Sam Fisher finds himself caught up in even more tangled intrigue as plot threads are twisted into a nonsensical knot. While the game puts two in the head of its hard-core stealth history, new mechanics allow the player to embody Fisher as an ultra bad-ass, hunting enemies in a manner as satisfying as Arkham Ayslum.
More To Come:
Red Dead Redemption
Alpha Protocol
Blur
Split/Second
Alan Wake
Prince Of Perisa Forgotten Sands
Just Cause 2
Bayonetta
Aliens vs, Predator
Until now.
2010 has proven itself to be the beneficiary of crowding in the 2009 holiday season, a trend that appears to be continuing into 2011. Spectacular games seem to be flowing unfettered on a near weekly basis with no sign of slowing down.
Since January my life has been dominated by the following experiences:
Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a Twinkie, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the game play time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.
Dante's Inferno is an attractive God Of War clone, literally stealing mechanics and game play from the trilogy Kratos made. Backed by a solid story re-interpreted from the epic poem, this brutally violent, twisted but visually impressive game is quick 10-15 hours. A locked camera contributes to unnecessary death and replay during platforming, creating pockets of annoyance in otherwise entertaining combat game.
Bioshock 2 suffers from a slow burn, tossing the player face first into repetitive combat without slight nods to story for the first few hours. Once all the major players are introduced, the plot and game play ramp up on a steep climb, culminating in one of the best endings I have ever seen. While not as lofty or cerebral in its goals as its predecessor, Bioshock 2 is a more than worthy sequel.
Heavy Rain is a perplexing game. A successful failure, the notion that it moves the medium forward in terms of storytelling, emotional engagement, drama or narrative is laughable. Brutally painful dialogue, voice acting and clichéd plotting are capped by a "twist" that exists for its own sake. As if by accident, Heavy Rain excels in the moments it allows itself to be a game, and the intuitive leap forward of extending quick-time events into the entire control scheme creates true moments of emotional connection. One can only hope that spurred by the innovative and sometimes gentle aspect of the controls, a stronger developer will take Heavy Rain as a starting point for a truly revolutionary game experience.
God of War 3 is everything one would want from the conclusion of the GOW trilogy. Tight game play combined with truly epic and stunning visuals tie a nearly incoherent plot together. Failing itself in its final moments, God Of War 3 betrays the very heart of the title character, stealing from Kratos everything that made him compelling.
Splinter Cell Conviction is an insanely short but beautifully crafted game. Not as short as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Conviction single player was finished in under 8 hours. Sam Fisher finds himself caught up in even more tangled intrigue as plot threads are twisted into a nonsensical knot. While the game puts two in the head of its hard-core stealth history, new mechanics allow the player to embody Fisher as an ultra bad-ass, hunting enemies in a manner as satisfying as Arkham Ayslum.
More To Come:
Red Dead Redemption
Alpha Protocol
Blur
Split/Second
Alan Wake
Prince Of Perisa Forgotten Sands
Just Cause 2
Bayonetta
Aliens vs, Predator
Monday, May 3, 2010
Games of the last few months
Since January I have found time to rip through some truly fantastic games, some of which were more of the same, others that tried for something new and many that were plain awesome.
When I look at the amount of time I have invested in many of these experiences it blows my mind. According to tracking on Raptr.com (through Xbox live) I played Assassin's Creed 2 for nearly 40 hours, followed by games like Arkham Asylum and Mass Effect. AC2 literally fought its way into my life, successfully dressing up the repetitive gameplay of the first in new outfits and lending even more conspiracy and confusion to the over-story of Desmond, the Assassins and the Templars. A superior game to the first in almost every way, AC 2 was how I spent most of January.
Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 was literally an afternoon of gamplay, the elusive AAA game that I am thrilled I rented rather than buying new. The single player campaign is a Bruckheimer-esque trip into nonsense overflowing with massive set-pieces and relentless momentum. Watching the online play devolve almost instantly into a hacker's paradise of broken and unbalanced play, racist 12 year old's and an entire lack of fun made me realize the real attraction of this series has become the online, with the single-player a tacked on afterthought that takes the best moments of MW and turns them into bigger and louder sequences, ruining the charm of the original. My disappointment was palpable.
Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a twinkie. Yet another sequel, it fortunately fell into the AC2 camp rather than MW2, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the gameplay time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.
When I look at the amount of time I have invested in many of these experiences it blows my mind. According to tracking on Raptr.com (through Xbox live) I played Assassin's Creed 2 for nearly 40 hours, followed by games like Arkham Asylum and Mass Effect. AC2 literally fought its way into my life, successfully dressing up the repetitive gameplay of the first in new outfits and lending even more conspiracy and confusion to the over-story of Desmond, the Assassins and the Templars. A superior game to the first in almost every way, AC 2 was how I spent most of January.
Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 was literally an afternoon of gamplay, the elusive AAA game that I am thrilled I rented rather than buying new. The single player campaign is a Bruckheimer-esque trip into nonsense overflowing with massive set-pieces and relentless momentum. Watching the online play devolve almost instantly into a hacker's paradise of broken and unbalanced play, racist 12 year old's and an entire lack of fun made me realize the real attraction of this series has become the online, with the single-player a tacked on afterthought that takes the best moments of MW and turns them into bigger and louder sequences, ruining the charm of the original. My disappointment was palpable.
Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a twinkie. Yet another sequel, it fortunately fell into the AC2 camp rather than MW2, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the gameplay time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.
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